Research Areas

• predictive processing in speech comprehension
• speech production
• speech and language in atypical populations (people who stutter, deaf people with cochlear implant)
• electroencephalography

I obtained a master’s degree in Linguistics in 2015 (Unipd) and a PhD in Psychological Sciences in 2021 (Unipd; supervisor: Prof. Francesca Peressotti). Currently, I’m a Research Fellow at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology (DPSS), University of Padova, Italy. My main research interests lie in predictive processing during auditory language comprehension, its electrophysiological correlates, and how prediction may relate to speech and language production processes and their neural underpinnings.

During my PhD I employed time-frequency and event-related potential analyses of electroencephalographic data to investigate the possible supporting role of language production processes in prediction during comprehension, both in typical and atypical populations (e.g. adults with persistent developmental stuttering). Currently, I’m developing a research line on prediction and degraded auditory processing by taking deaf people with cochlear implant as testing ground, in order to understand how predictive processing aided by linguistic and non-linguistic cues may benefit hearing-impaired people.

I’m currently collaborating with researchers from Padova University Hospital (Padova, Italy), IRCCS San Camillo Hospital (Venice, Italy), BCBL – Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain), CIMeC – Centro Interdipartimentale Mente-Cervello (University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy), and the Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca (Lucca, Italy).

In 2020-2021 I spent a visiting period at the BCBL – Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain). Here I worked with the Brain Rhythms and Cognition group, under the supervision of Nicola Molinaro (BCBL / Ikerbasque), and focused on speech-brain entrainment in stuttering.

Previously (2016-2017), I worked with the Cognitive Biology of Language group at the University of Barcelona (Spain), under the supervision of Cedric Boeckx (UB / ICREA). Here I contributed to the group’s line of investigation on self-domestication in the evolution of Homo Sapiens.